Frenzy charges devoid of Purpose now

Please read the whole post before you make any judgement as to the intention of my post.

You went way overboard with the removal of frenzy charge enhancing nodes and the repositioning of the frenzy charge nodes.

You positioned the extra frenzy charges quite far away from other useful nodes (for a particular weapon specific skillbuild) which makes it impossible to skill them for a net benefit in attack speed (in comparison to another route you could have skilled towards)

Unless you are using flicker strike, you only gain 5% attackspeed per frenzy charge, which means that you basically use 4-5 skillpoints for 5% attackspeed.

You can skill 5% attackspeed with much less skillpoints, and go into a direction much more feasible for ANY build, and still have points left over.

Why would anyone want to spend 4 or 5 skillpoints for an increased attackspeed of 5%, while going that route is detrimental to their overall skillbuild already (since you are left in a deadend position, and preceding skill nodes fit only 1 particular weapon type at a time, so basically you are left in a nirvana).

I already calculated around and came to the conclusion, that even with flicker strike as my main attack (which gains another 10% attackspeed per frenzy charg), its only feasible to skill one of the extra frenzy charges (the one that is close to the increased weapon dmg nodes of the type i am using), and im not even 100% sure about that one yet, because it was quite close.

You went from one extreme to the other, and basically robbed frenzy charges of their purpose.
They were a unique game mechanic, now they became flat 5% attackspeed increases which is equal to generic 5% increased attackspeed nodes.

Did you forget that you have attackspeed nodes scattered all around the skilltree, that are actually close to other useful nodes, which basically cost 1 skillpoint?
Basically you went from one extreme (frenzy charges > all) to frenzy charges being utterly useless for every build.

If someone can prove me wrong in my assumption by providing some kind of calculation i would greatly appreciate that, but im quite sure i am right.

I actually liked that PoE was heavily focused around charges, its a unique mechanic that cant be found in other ARPGs, but then you went on and basically removed one of the unique mechanics of your game and exchanged it for a borderline generic system (X% increased Y for a skillpoint, EVERY GAME DOES THAT, you had something unique over it).

Didnt you like your own unique creation or what?
Because i surely dont understand the decision making behind that change.

If anything, you should have tried to make your charge system even more unique, by adding more charge enhancing nodes, so that players have more options to customize their character.

This change was a HUGE step backwards regarding innovative mechanics in your own game. Why would anyone do that? I dont get it.

If i have to choose between two games of the same genre, i will choose the one that has more innovative stuff over the other.
Now you have one less unique mechanic over Diablo 3.
Think about that for a second.

For me, the charge mechanic was such interesting design (especially with the charge enhancing nodes) that i considered PoE to be capable of taking down D3.
This change makes me reconsider.

This post has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my old skillbuild did more damage than my new.
Devs, you can go on and check my character, i didnt even skill a single point ingame yet, so i dont actually know what my new damage is.

This post is aiming at drawing attention to the purpose of charges in general.
What was your inention for them?

Just looking at the numbers, i can tell by calculation, that frenzy charges are not only useless, but also devoid of any unique mechanic (due to the removal of charge enhancing nodes).
You might wanna rename them to that, because thats what they are.
Generic 5% increased attackspeed nodes, devoid of any unique mechanic.

I would really like to know how the removal of a unique game mechanic is considered a good thing for the game.
If you didnt like how everyone skilled frenzy charges, you should have asked yourselves the question what their purpose was in the first place.

You wanted to enable more options regarding the customization of ones skillbuild, im quite sure of that (because in the last version, frenzy charges were soo good that you cant really skip them).

However, you should have approached that problem without removing your own unique game mechanic from the game in the process (which is what you did with 0.97).

You should have added charge enhancing nodes instead, make the charges themselves more accessible (so that more builds can reach them), in order to increase the amount of options a player has regarding customization.
That would have fixed the problem, but at the same time would have kept your own unique game mechanic INTACT.

On the one hand, you realized that doing what i just said, was the correct approach, you made one charge more accesible (1 more base charge), but then you completely botched it by making all the other charges completely out of reach and devoid of purpose anyways (by removing the charge enhancing nodes). Quite the contradiction imo.

The best approach imo, would have been to enable all charges (no extra charges skillable in the tree) and then add the effects of the charge enhancing nodes to OTHER existing nodes.
That way people wouldnt have to decide between non charge enhancing and charge enhancing nodes (which you deemed to be favored towards charge enhancing nodes, with which i agree) but instead they would just have to decide between different skillbuilds (because this way, charges become part of every skillbuild, since they are integrated, now you just have to choose which path you prefer).

Integrating your unique game mechanic into as many parts of your game as possible is IMO, the thing you should try to accomplish, not the opposite.
Making the player choose between a generic system, and a charge system, is always going to favor one of the two, depending on which one you nerf harder.
Merge them for a win win situation.

You keep your unique mechanic and at the same time you remove the problem that charge based builds were borderline stronger than NON charge based builds (thus no real decision regarding skillbuild since charge builds were borderline stronger), by applying your charge system to every part of the game.

It's obvious that charges are less useful in this patch. It's good that this is a beta patch and not release. They took a step back so they could get a new view and start walking again. In the patch notes they state, "This allows us to balance the charges to be more useful without making them mandatory." They changed it to see what they want to change. Your feedback is useful in that it points out the weaknesses, however I think you missunderstand their intentions and make several assumptions without any evidence.

Im quite sure they are terrible, thats why i didnt spend a single point for now, i just wont play this version.

I dont see the point in testing a chargeless skillbuild and providing feedback for it, because im already quite sure that i am not going to play this game if charges arent a very important part of the game.

In 0.97 they arent important, they are borderline bad.
If i want to play a game that has all the same old mechanics (auras and fixed skills and whatnot) then i will play D3 because they will surely handle these same old mechanics as good as PoE if not better, while at the same time having their own share of unique game mechanics.

If there is one thing with which PoE can score, then it is its innovative and unique additions and alterations to the generic ARPG, of which one of them is the charge system.
One less unique innovation = one less reason to play this game.

The problem with charges, before, was that they were to powerful. As you said, you had to use them, which is never a good thing in any game imo. If Cold damage was vastly superior to all other damages, I would expect a nerf coming soon. Otherwise the only other option is, no matter what, spec for cold damage (As it is vastly superior), which then nullifies the point of the web, which is to create varied builds all of which can compete at upper levels of play.

To reiterate what I've said in other threads on this, GGG is planning more things for charges. I agree that they're now terrible for the way people are used to building around them. We'll just have to wait and see what they have in store. Until then, I would encourage people to test other builds, or try to find some new ways to make charges effective that may inspire some new changes in future patches.

Another thing that's important to note is that charges were always meant to be optional, and not always more powerful than builds not having them.

Another thing that's important to note is that charges were always meant to be optional, and not always more powerful than builds not having them.

They are not optional, thats a delusion.
The moment you integrated another mechanic that increases a characters strength (which charges are), you will have to cope that they are mandatory, or useless.

Just like auras are mandatory in D2 to compete.
You can decide not to use them because you think they are optional, but thats a delusion aswell.

If you nerf additional charges (in the skilltree) to the ground, that doesnt accomplish anything other than basically removing them from the game (if they are worse than other options and they exclude each other, which they currently do).

If you want them to be a part of this game, they will have to be powerful enough to be better than another option, otherwise they arent going to be used.
If they are powerful enough, they become mandatory.

They introduced auras as skill gems, which disconnects them from the mandatory skillbuild problem.
They need to do the same with charges if they want them to be part of this game without being a mandatory option in the skilltree.

How they accomplish this is for them to figure out, but i already made a suggestion how to do that in the OP.
You include their effects in other skilltree passives, thus disconnecting them from the mandatory skillbuild problem.

Charges are nerfed to the floor now with minor but beneficial affects and fewer of them.

Defense is supposedly more important but DPS has not become less important which to me signifies a balance issue with them. DPS was so important before because it nullified any dependancy on defensive skills, also most of the defensive buffs are kinda weak. Maybe the auras will change that.

They increased the amount of SP needed for the +1 curses, they added spell dodging, but at an additional 4 sp, they nerfed the hp regen nodes (less of them/weakened the ones near marauder start) and endurance charges no longer grant the life regen.

Them added emphasis to defence, making glass cannon skills weaker (here's looking at you eldritch battery).

But this can all be turned around, this is just a beta. I'm hoping that all these changes become good decisions in the long run, but at the moment it makes a lot of stuff look a whole lot less appealing.